Life Coaching and Career Coaching

Is your life in balance?

Recently I was at a Toastmasters Club Meeting and the speaker describe an event of watching a rope walker, a man who mounted a rope suspended between two trees and began to walk from one end to the other. The speaker was impressed and curious by the performance. He asked the rope walker how he did it. The roper walker invited the speaker to try it.

The speaker got onto the rope next to the tree where one end was tied. After a few false starts, he succeeded in mounting the rope and maintaining his balance. He looked straight ahead, placed one foot directly in front of the other and spread his arms out straight at the shoulders. The rope swayed but he held his balance.

He slowly moved his back leg around placing in front and moved forward. The rope swayed again but he retained his balance. He repeated the moment once more. This time the rope swayed more violantly and the speakers legs swayed to and fro. Keeping his arms out he maintained his balance as the swaying slowed. The further he moved down the rope and away from the tree, the greater the swaying with each step.

Again, he brought his rear leg forward but this time the swaying increased. He looked down at the rope,  his legs stiffened and he brought his arms in closer to his body in an vain attempt to dampen the swaying. He fell off.

The rope walker explained that in order to successfully walk the rope you have to be focused. To be focused requires that you allow yourself to become part of the rope. First,  relax your legs to make them part of the rope and they will absorb the energy that moving your leg forward releases into the rope. Second,  spread your arms out perpendicular to the rope to distribute your weight across the rope and making your body the center of gravity. By extending your arms you can control the swing. And, third, most of all, look straight ahead, focus on the end of the rope tied to the other tree.  When you loss your focus, you loss your balance. This, the speaker said, is how the rope walker keeps his balance and can walk between the trees

Balance is what it is all about. That is what life is all about. Balancing your ego and needs  with your obligations and responsibilities to others.

The greatest balancing act we face in life is balancing our personal life goals and our professional goals. It is an act that only becomes more complex as we age. The sooner you start to learn how to balance yourself, then the better and more productive you will be in the time allotted to you in this life.

Toward the end of the second decade  in our lifecycle, say our late teens and early twenties, we are, or tend to be, very self-center. We want what we want and we want it now. Our personal goals are fairly short term and ill defined. Our professional goals are equally ill defined, if we have any at all, except where it comes to making money to support our immediate personal “needs.” This is when we get onto the rope, leaving the security of our family. We are drawn to the thrill and  uncertainty that comes with the independence  of  ”adulthood.”  While we are glancing into the future. our attention is more focused on breaking our connections with the past that we perceive as holding us back.

Around our mid to late twenties, if we are lucky, we have become independent and self supporting. We can experiment with life, take chances, and live a movie version of the hero in our own drama. Or we may find that we have made a few wrong turns and are now caught in a trap of our own making, one we may spend the rest of our life trying to escape. In either case, we have not yet addressed the issue of balance. In many respects this can be the biggest mistake we can make and introduce chaos into our life.

What we do and how we do it, in this our third decade of life,  set the “initial” conditions which will determine how our life will work out. Without a goal to focus on, without priorities, we, like the speaker who would be a rope walker, can slip and fall. What in chaos theory is referred to as the butterfly effect.

Janus says

What is your life goal?

What are your priorities?

Where is your balance?

Do you have a rope walker who can  helping you to navigate the rope of your life?

How long do you want to live? What do you want to achieve in your life time?

The two most important questions that you can ask yourself.

Do you have answers for your life?

JanusLifeCoaching.com is founded on the principle and belief that our lives are judged by our actions. Success  and failure are determined by how well we use the time and talents we have been granted.

I have lived long enough now to have witnessed a number of funerals. Regardless whether rich and famous or poor and lonely,  one question comes through in celebrating the deceased’s life . The celebration focuses on what was accomplished and what might have been accomplished had things been different.

In our 21st century youth oriented culture, we tend to focus on and try to perpetuate the youth phase of our life-cycle  and to ignore or hide the fact that we are aging. Medical science and medicine are giving us the tools to perpetuate the allusion of youth. Our pharmaceutical companies offer wondrous new creams, pills, dyes, and gels, to slow down, hide or reverse the appearance of  age.  Our commercial culture bombards us with images and products celebrate that wondrous youthful phase — 20 - 30 when we are/were young and healthy enough to do anything and old enough for society to allow you to do it.

But in today’s emerging global society, age and longevity are real issues for society, government, families and individuals. Technological and demographic changes are disrupting the established order. Cultural chasms are breakout and separating generations. They are breaking the traditional chain of growth and transitions in society and its parts. A growing, aging population threatens to overburden the health care system in many of the advanced nations, while a population explosion in the developing world threaten the very core of traditional cultures and institutions.

Life Expectancy at birth (years)

Life expectancy at birth (years) world map including:
1) 191 United Nations member states (all except Montenegro)

2) Republic of China - Taiwan

3) Western Sahara territory

4) 27 non-sovereign entities marked with a white hyphen (-) or a black asterisk (*):

- 23 dependent territories

- Hong-Kong and Macau: Special Administrative Regions of the People’s Republic of China.

- Occupied Palestinian Territories: West Bank and Gaza Strip.

There is not much anyone of us can do to change the tide of global development nor the evolving human impact on the planet. However, we can have a impact on that small piece of the universe which is under our personal control. For example, How we will treat those around us? How we will will treat our body? How we will use our talents and gifts, i.e. our minds? How we will use our spirit and energies? These are under our person control –IF we are willing, on the personal level, to responsibility for HOW we will use the time we have on this planet.

The Janus Lifecycle Strategy is based on the idea that, like the Roman god Janus, each of us is one body (head) with two faces. One face is looking back at the past as we perceive it and the other in looking into the future as we envision it.

The past and future are in the moment from Janus point of view

In this moment, you and I have an opportunity, as we have always had, to influence how long we each will live and what we can accomplish in the time reexamining to us. But to do so means taking responsibility.

How do I take responsibility?

Janus says

Start by taking  proactive control over your life today, by asking the question — how much time do I have left?

And once you have answer that question for yourself, take stock of where you are in your life and what you have accomplished and what you want to accomplish.